In World War II, couldn't we have just disabled the battleship Yamato instead of sinking it?

[taterguy]

I'm only asking because I think it would be so freaking cool to go on a tour of it.

Why didn't our war planners actually plan ahead?

[LeftyFingerPop]

1. We need men like you at the Pentagon.

[MichiganVote]

61. I nominate your post as No. 1 on DU for the year. LOL!! You are so funny!

[Archae]

2. Because it was there.

It was the pride of their navy.

They put so much into it, so it had to be blasted to pieces and sunk.

Besides, the plan was to beach the Yamato close to Okinawa and the ship would pound our guys with those HUGH fershlugginer guns.

[MrScorpio]

3. Probably because a disabled giant assed Japanese battleship would still be lethal

And destroying it would keep it from being repaired and sent out to kill more Americans.

Besides, and I may be wrong about this, but I don't think that the Japanese Imperial Navy was too keen on the idea of surrender.


Bonzai, baby!

[taterguy]

13. Just take out the rudder and leave it in the middle of the ocean

Let our ships sail around it.

Eventually they'd run out of food and water on the Yamato.

[petronius]

22. I think 'shoot the rudder off' is the torpedo bomber equivalent of shooting

a gun out of someone's hand - looks good in the movies, but not so easy in practice. They were probably happy to hit any part of it they could reach, and by the time they'd hit it enough to where it couldn't fight back it was toast. And your plane would require disabling or sinking the accompanying destroyers too, so they couldn't tow Yamato home.

Beyond that, if we had captured it, it probably would have been viewed as a big pile of valuable scrap metal rather than a tourist attraction. At least now you can still visit the ship (if you have a submarine)...

[Xithras]

41. Actually, the Yamato had four screws, and was capable of being turned without a rudder.

They would have been WIDE turns, but even without a rudder it would have been capable of heading back to the Japanese homeland in short order, where it could have been tugged into port for repairs.

Disabling it would have required taking out not only the rudder, but all four of the screws on both sides of the ship. Considering that the screws were under the hull, it would have been impossible to take them out without blowing massive holes in the ship anyway.

[taterguy]

42. Send a few frogmen to unscrew the screws

Problem solved.

No holes required.

[friendly_iconoclast]

45. Suuure. Unscrew four of these while the ship is steaming?

From the Battleship Yamato Museum:





Can you say "frogman sushimi"?

[taterguy]

54. Can you say "American ingenuity"?

Attach some waterproof drills to some very long poles.

[Brickbat]

4. You know it's a spaceship now, right?

[Call Me Wesley]

9. LOL! You beat me to it.

:hi:

[Brickbat]

11. I'll have the song in my head the rest of the night!

We're off to outer space!
We're leaving Mother Earth to save the human race!

[eShirl]

24. the new live-action movie comes out in December

in Japan

there's a trailer for it on Youtube, somewhere
DH has been playing it over and over to learn the Star Blazers theme song in Japanese

[elleng]

5. Because they were so thoughtful about the U.S.S. Arizona?

[taterguy]

14. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind

[elleng]

15. Right, we had reason to believe the Japanese were friendly chaps, right,

who would be subject to handshakes?

[taterguy]

16. Not a handshake, a few torpedoes in the stern

Enough to prevent it from being a threat but still keep it floating for future generations.

Have you ever toured a World War II battleship? It's freaking cool.

[elleng]

17. Nope; sounds like a good idea!

[elleng]

6. dupe

[TheMightyFavog]

7. Yamato was overrated.

Had it ever gone toe-to toe with the USS Wisconsin (Or any other of the Iowa Class battleships) Yamato would have gone down quicker than Ted Haggard's pants in a room full of meth-dealing male prostitutes. (Radar-assisted gunnery FTW)

[taterguy]

18. Another reason not to sink the Yamato with carrier planes

What good were all those US battleships if they never got to sink Japanese ships?

[cemaphonic]

37. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

That is all

[Call Me Wesley]

8. It's still ... out there ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPoNTjwPb5w

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. Hmmm... "We've got to disable the Bismark" isn't very catchy, can't see it working for the Yamato...

[david13]

12. Johnny Horton comes to mind there, indeed. Maybe he did the

inspiration.
But it is a good idea. There were quite a few items that were captured and converted on all sides, at that time.
dc

[Iggo]

19. Kinda related. Kinda not. But whatever.

On Dec 4th, in Chino CA, the only remaining fully authentic Mitsubishi Zero is gonna fly.

I'm gonna go take pictures.

[taterguy]

29. Only one Zero left? Did they damage all the ones they used in the Pearl Harbor movie?

Another reason to hate that movie.

[sofa king]

35. Most of the various Pearl Harbor film "actors" were T-6 Texans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-6_Texan

[taterguy]

36. You are incorrect! It was Tora! Tora! Tora! that used T-6s

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213149/trivia?tr0739430

Apparently they only used three for Pearl Harbor though. Guess I'll have to watch that movie again. I thought there were a lot more than three planes in that movie.

[MilesColtrane]

20. Total War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

The concept of total war involves not only destroying the enemy's ability to wage war, but the will to wage war.

In retrospect such decisions, reached by the victor's goal of survival, are rarely judged as war crimes.

[Kaleva]

21. If only we had captured Hitler and made him an attraction at Disney Land.

[old mark]

28. I think he lives in Miami now...

with Osama bin Laden.

mark

[krispos42]

23. So, we should have used smaller bombs on it?

I don't think the air crews would have treated any officer that made that suggestion very well.


"Okay, boys, we've found the Yamato!"

The assembled combat aircrews cheer

"Okay, now, here's what we're going to do. We want to try to capture it so we can turn it into a museum ship after the war's over. So no torpedo bombers, and we're replacing your armor-piercing 500-pounders with these standard 125-pounders."

Silence

"So try to aim for the non-explosive parts of the ship. Don't go for the gun turrents, the powder magazines, or the fuel bunkerage. Aim for their bridge, rudders, and food storage. Everybody clear?"

Ominous silence. Then...

"Boy, I think the Commander here needs to have his head cleared. Must be gasoline fumes or something. You, you, you, and you, take him down to his cabin and clear his head. By any means necessary."

Four large pilots rise up and escort the Commander out of the room, oblivious to his protests. A few minutes pass. A bedraggled Commander re-appears in the briefing room. He seems to have tripped on the deck and banged his head rather badly on the steel plating. Several times.

"Alright, sink the fucker."

[PJPhreak]

25. If we did not sink it,but only disabled it they would have scuttled it.

As did the Germans after WWI...

The scuttling of the German fleet took place at the Royal Navy's base at Scapa Flow, in Scotland, after the end of the First World War. The High Seas Fleet had been interned there under the terms of the Armistice whilst negotiations took place over the fate of the ships. Fearing that all of the ships would be seized and divided amongst the allied powers, the German commander, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, decided to scuttle the fleet.

The scuttling was carried out on 21 June 1919. Intervening British guard ships were able to beach a number of the ships, but 52 of the 74 interned vessels sank. Many of the wrecks were salvaged over the next few years and were towed away for scrapping. The few that remain are popular dive sites.

You never let the opposition gain control of your weapon systems,even if one must destroy them yourself

[taterguy]

26. So why is U-505 in a Chicago museum?

Sometimes you don't get to call the shots.

By the time the Yamato sank, the US had overwhelming naval and air superiority in the Pacific.

We could do anything we damn well pleased.

Please think before you post.

[Deep13]

32. There were hundreds of U-boats.

Most were sunk. Throw the dice enough times and eventually the unlikely happens. Law of averages. Plus even a big U-boat like the Type IX U505 is pretty small. The Americans had time to get inside before it could be scuttled. That would not have been possible with a floating city like Yamato.

Please think before you post. :evilgrin:

[Orrex]

27. Pity that none of our war planners had your foresight or acumen.

[Deep13]

30. No.

We were trying to win the war. First, it's not so easy to carefully disable a warship without sinking it, especially when it is shooting at you. Second, doing so would have meant one of two things. First, the crew would have scuttled the ship to prevent it from being taken. Second, the Allies would have had to board and unfamiliar ship and fight compartment by compartment to seize the ship. The only real option was to sink it from a distance.

[taterguy]

31. So the crew is gonna sink their boat and hang out in life rafts?

Don't they know what happened to the crew of the USS Indianapolis?

[Deep13]

33. Who said anything about life rafts? nt

[Angleae]

44. No, they get offloaded by the surviving destroyers.

4 of the 8 destroyers present survived.

[sofa king]

34. That was actually the Japanese plan.

Yamato and her escorts were originally allocated only enough fuel-oil for a one-way trip, so the plan was to beach the Yamato off of Okinawa and use the hulk as an artillery base.

By happenstance the Yamato and Musashi both sank in water less than 2000 feet deep, so with a few Brazilian dollars one might be able to re-float one of them and bring it in.

[whistler162]

38. Same reason they didn't just disable the Bismark

instead of sinking it.

Firing accuracy was better but

[whistler162]

39. Same reason they didn't just disable the Bismark

instead of sinking it.

Firing accuracy was better but

[whistler162]

40. Same reason they didn't just disable the Bismark

instead of sinking it.

Firing accuracy was better but not great and it was at the start of the battle for Okinawa.

[taterguy]

43. Completely and totally different situations

The Bismark went down in May 1941.

England was hanging on by a thread.

The Luftwaffe was bombing their cities on a regular basis.

The German army wasn't tied up in Russia yet.

They had a fraction of the ships needed for their defense.

The Bismark was on its way to destroy the convoys that were vital for England's survival.

Yamato sank in April 1945.

The Japanese hadn't gotten anywhere near the US.

They hadn't mounted any offensive operations in 3 years.

They had no capability of striking the US.

We were just mopping up.

ps: The firing accuracy on US battleships was pretty damn good. When they un-mothballed some of those ships during the Reagan years they tested the old firing computers. They worked just as well as the computers that were available in the mid-80s.

[whistler162]

46. GADS... peopl nand lack of education.....

[taterguy]

50. As in people that can't spell the word 'people'?

Or as in, I have no retort for your argument so I'll resort to snark

[Paladin]

47. I Think Some Folks On This Thread Need To Get Laid More Often. (n/t)

[Mendocino]

48. Did you forget the sarcasm thingy,

or at least a smilie?:)

[taterguy]

49. No

[Mendocino]

58. So you are seriously suggesting

that in a time of total war a nation not destroy one of an enemies primary offensive weapons because of it's potential as a future tourist attraction?

[taterguy]

59. Disable it, don't destroy it. Why is this simple concept so difficult?

[Mendocino]

60. "I'm only asking because it would be cool to go on a tour of it"

Your words. Tell you what, maybe "they" should have just missed shootimg JFK. Kennedy then could have spent his retirement being the curator of The Texas Book Depository Museum and Theme Park, appearing alongside Oswald, talking about how it was just about making a pile of money, not anything sinister. They could sell Dealy-Pops and magic bullets in the gift shop. :eyes:

[Supply Side Jesus]

51. The Brass should have given more thought to future tourist attractions...

Seeing it capsize and the detonation of the magazines, seen a hundred miles away would have been a horrific sight.

[old mark]

52. We could just have sent Japan a sharply worded diplomatic note on December 8th, 1941, too...

but we reacted more strongly...


mark

[taterguy]

53. On December 8, 1941, Australia was in danger of being invaded

Don't wannna hurt no kangaroos.

Koalas too.

And you're missing the point: By the time the Yamato sank, the war had been decided.

It was just a question of how much longer it would last.

[old mark]

62. My previous comment was a "joke" - next time I will make it known as such

so no one misunderstands...


mark

[taterguy]

63. A misunderstood post would be tragic

:sarcasm:

[liberaltrucker]

55. It's called "total" or "all out" war for a reason

And yes, I did "think before I posted" and read through
the thread.

Your idea of a museum is very interesting, and those of
our generation may have benefited very much from one.

However, President Truman and Admiral Nimitz didn't have
the luxury of hindsight. The decisions they made were
appropriate for the time. Countless American and Japanese
lives were saved by those decisions.

99.9% of your posts are thought-provoking or humorous. This
one, however made little practical sense.

Friends can disagree, right? :pals:

[Parche]

56. Because Admiral Spruance said so....

so there...

And Vice Admiral Mitscher gave the order to Launch em...........


and that was the end of that...and the light cruiser Yahagi......


:patriot:

[Parche]

57. What about the 'Musashi, and the converted sister ship 'Shinano'

Musashi sunk on 24Oct 1944, by Admiral Halsey and the 3rd fleet, Shinano sunk 29-30November 1944 by the Submarine Archerfish...off of Tokyo harbor

:patriot:

[Dr Morbius]

64. Consider the history of the conflict up to that point.

Up to this point in WWII, everywhere the Americans met the Japanese the latter fought pretty much to the death. At Iwo Jima, in the Philippines, wherever the two nations met in battle: the Japanese were outnumbered and outgunned and nevertheless fought ferociously, meaning every US victory had been costly. If the US Navy had merely disabled Yamoto, the allied brass had every reason to suspect the Japanese would simply scuttle the ship themselves to prevent allowing it to fall into enemy hands, or more likely booby-trap it so anyone claiming the vessel would lose men - after first taking off all the available munitions for future use.

I recall a line from President Kennedy, who suggested that anyone evaluating the decisions of a President must take into account the information that President had at the time. Same situation here: the top brass had every reason to believe the Japanese would never permit Yamoto to fall into allied hands, and based on the information they had available to them, I'd do the same thing. I believe this: the Japanese frame of mind in the mid-20th century would NEVER have tolerated such an embarrassment as seeing the pride of Japan in the hands of Yankees. This would be a major loss of face. The cost of capturing Yamoto for the allies would have been too high.

If one American had died so you could have your "freaking cool" tour, that would have been too high a price - and although you're quite the extrovert and clown hereabouts, I think I know you well enough to suspect you agree. It certainly would have been cool to see the largest such ship ever built, and certainly the last of its kind, but war usually doesn't lead to cool outcomes for winners or losers.

[taterguy]

66. I reluctantly concede your point

[pintobean]

65. We had aircraft in the sky,

We didn't need to damage the ship.